The present invention relates to a computerized parking meter system which is designed to modify the currently available coin-inserting type mechanical parking meter so as to minimize the manpower required for parking management.
Due to the restriction of their basic mechanical structure, the prior art parking meters can only count down from a present value to zero so that such prior art parking meters can not meet the requirements of multi-function purpose.
In summary, the disadvantages existing in the prior art parking meter are mainly as follows:
1. Owing to their simple mechanical configuration, the prior art parking meters can only count down with a fixed charging rate. The charging rate cannot be automatically adjusted for different situations. The charging rate should, for example, be automatically adjusted higher or higher when parking for a longer period of time and the charge for peak hours should be higher than for normal hours, so that the parking turn over rate can be significantly improved.
2. For prior art parking meters, an operator has to supervise hundreds of such parking meters simultaneously, and needs to inspect each of them as to whether the allowable parking time has expired. However, it is hard to effect his job efficiently and reliably.
3. In general, a client normally can not accurately preestimate his parking time. Under such circumstances, if a client's parking time has not yet expired when he decides to leave he has no way to get change back from the prior art parking meters, however, if a client parks over time, he has to be punished. It is unfair to such clients especially in the event that a next client can use this non-expired parking space without paying any parking fee.
It is, therefore, the object of the present invention to obviate and to mitigate the aboveidentified drawbacks.